Analytical Essay: Bend It Like Beckham

Analytical Essay - Bend It Like Beckham

In the movie bend it like Beckham, the discourses relating to sexuality and gender shows how the social expectations of women interfere with their desires and roles in society, and this creates a demarcation between family members. It also suggests how homosexuality has become a big part of the modern society, but that the prejudice and negativity associated with both of the adolescent girls in the film, Jess and Jules and the fact that they love soccer and dress comfortably in a boyish way, still is dominant in both traditional and more modern communities.
In the essay I will discuss how their unconventional appearance results in their sexuality being questioned by their parents, and how the
Women can’t play soccer and they can’t dress just as they want according to Jules and Jess’s mothers. Jess’s mom is all about her being an ordinary Sikh woman that can cook, clean and marry an Indian man. Jess is a big contrast of this, and her opposing sister that is almost everything a Sikh woman is supposed to be, is used in the film to help the viewer to realize the differences between the sisters and to what extend Jess fulfills her cultural expectations. Their parents favor jess’ sister Pinky, because she is traditionally feminine in terms of appearance, qualities and hobbies. This is illustrated in the film as the sympathy from their parents always revolving around her sister, and is also shown by the transformation Pinky goes through, where she in the beginning is very much tied to jess, but as the film proceeds, she starts to look and act more like her mom, and is always seen on their side of the arguments. She contains a lot of female qualities and is getting married to a wealthy Indian man. Jess on the other hand dresses much more like a boy, and doesn’t give any interest in taking the traditional role of a woman. This is highlighted by a particular scene (00:27:00) where her mother has her back turned to Jess, cooking an Indian dish while Jess is juggling vegetables on her knees instead of participating in the cooking. The shots are full body shots,
This is shown by many misleads and assumptions made by their mothers, especially Jules mum. Her suspicions are driven by the factor that her daughter is not a typical adolescent but an atypical one. Her mom has no other answer to her daughter’s odd obsession with soccer and tomboyish look than that she is lesbian. Many young people today would see homosexuality as a more natural thing, but it seems like Jules’s mom’s worst nightmare. This conclusion is drawn based on the segment of the movie (00:58:00), where the mom overhears a conversation between Jules and jess, where all she hears is “You don’t know the meaning of love! You’ve really hurt me Jess” Jules mother presumes that her daughter is having a relationship to jess even though they are fighting about their coach Joe. The following scene I shot in their living room, where Jules’s mother is sitting in the couch with her husband consoling her, while she is crying over the fact that she thinks her daughter is lesbian. She also expresses in that same scene, how she is scared of her daughter being a social outcast and the main topic at the other mothers afternoon talks. She has a tendency to over dramatize small things, which is also shown in a scene towards the ending of the movie (01:33:12), where she is driving Jules to jess’s sisters wedding. She is very frustrated and angry due to a recent incident at the